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Curated playlist

American corporate subsidiaries

  • Condé NastCondé Nast began in 1909 when a publisher bought Vogue. The weekly society journal had been in print since 1892.
  • GoogleGoogle's name is a misspelling of googol, a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The search engine was first nicknamed BackRub.
  • KFCKFC keeps a copy of its founding recipe, signed by Colonel Harland Sanders, in a safe inside a vault at its headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. Alongside it sit 11 vials holding the herbs and spices themselves. The company behind that…
  • TikTokTikTok reached a billion active users within four years, faster than Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.
  • CBS SportsCBS Sports lost the NFL in 1993 and did not get it back until 1998.
  • Morgan StanleyMUFG paid $9 billion for a stake in Morgan Stanley with one paper check. Banks were closed for Columbus Day.
  • The Plain DealerWinston Churchill reportedly said Cleveland's Plain Dealer had the best newspaper name in the world.
  • Paramount PicturesParamount's mountain logo was reportedly sketched on a napkin in 1914. W. W. Hodkinson drew it from memory.
  • SpaceXAISpaceXAI, the artificial intelligence and social media division of SpaceX, was not always a division of anything. On the 12th of July 2023, Elon Musk publicly announced its predecessor company, xAI, calling it committed to being "maximally…
  • CBSIn 1951, CBS introduced its Eye logo, inspired by a hex sign and a Shaker drawing.
  • Georgia-PacificGeorgia-Pacific started as one hardwood lumber yard in Augusta, Georgia. By 1934 it had just five employees.
  • Sony Pictures ClassicsThe Lives of Others was rejected by four major film festivals before Sony Pictures Classics took it on.
  • LucasfilmLucasfilm began on the 10th of December 1971, when filmmaker George Lucas founded it in Marin County, California. Today it is best known for Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and for pushing the craft of special effects, sound and computer…
  • Bethesda SoftworksBethesda Softworks started on the 28th of June 1986, at the kitchen table of a house in Bethesda, Maryland. Its founder, Christopher Weaver, treated the new company as an experiment. He wanted to learn whether the PC market was a viable…

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